


Air-Conditioned Love

by Wierdowithagun



Series: Follow Your Arrow [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Drabble, F/M, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, No specificly named characters, Romance, Sequel, Spin-Off, real-life, song-fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-19
Updated: 2014-09-19
Packaged: 2018-02-18 00:49:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2329169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wierdowithagun/pseuds/Wierdowithagun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A random little oneshot Idea I had for Tayuya as based on my portrayal of her from the 'FOLLOW YOUR ARROW' Fanfic. An angsty kind of broad recollection of her past through the eyes of a childhood friend and a kinda-sorta happy ending for her after she leaves the FYA storyline.<br/>Inspired from the song 'Air-Conditioned Love' by Ludo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Air-Conditioned Love

I watched her grow up, a fiery ball of energy always bouncing around, lighting up the room like a solar flare every time she entered it. A tomboy, she always was, but still feminine in her own sort of way. Her smile wasn't a rare thing then, it happened a lot. Her laughter, like wind chimes tinkling gently in the breeze, relaxing and purifying almost.

  
_I am a savage be-smitten with her_  
_The loneliest werewolf, I wander the earth._

  
Not the most intelligent, she was driven almost constantly by impulse and the need to feel adrenaline coursing through her. She took unnecessary risks, acted and spoke without thinking, wound up hurt a lot, both emotionally and physically. Girls are frail, sometimes, despite the fact that they, She especially, is the strongest living being I've ever met. Or maybe not even strong, just stubborn. Built solid with a divine excess of willpower, easily building back up the walls of her inner fortress each time one of them crumbled.

  
_My words are mistakes and my thoughts are unclean_  
_This cider inside me, it slides like a dream_

  
I watched her, day after day, from afar. Feeling as if I might stain her if I got too close. Solid and strong, but delicate, like a flower. Beautiful and thin, like stained glass. If I got too close it would ruin this... captivating aura she had about her. The thing that kept me watching, even when I wanted to turn away, even when I hated her, even when she became something else all for the sake of someone else... Even when I knew she had become toxic to me, when I was well aware that I was doing nothing but fueling the fire beneath me that slowly licked at me, cooking me alive until I knew I had to get out or risk death.

  
_The moon of her window, it glows evermore_  
_The night wrapped around us, two spoons in a drawer_

It was cold still. One sided, this love, as I had recognized it as, was. Parasitic, she used me as a friend, only when she needed comfort, company... a friend, but never anything more. And after she'd had her filling, she tossed me away and went after her target, never resting, never braking long enough to realize that her intense energy, like that of a star, was going to destroy her.  
And I never could force myself to tell her. I could never do anything. It's not all her fault, as I kept letting it happen, telling myself each time that I would not do it again only to decide in the moment that just this last time I would enjoy being so close to her. Still afraid to touch, to damage, despite the fact that her frame was cracking further and further. It only added to her beauty, those imperfections.

  
_I miss her dark blankets, I miss her clean sheets_  
_All her Julietting, coquettish and sweet_

  
She left in the midst of high school with a man...or... a boy , really, that she hardly knew. So sure was she in all that energy, all that confidence, that he was the one for her, that he loved her, and that she loved him. Those teenage girls, so easily swept off their feet by lies and false devotion. She wasn't the smartest, I said before, she was not separate from the rest of the girls I knew as far as statistical evidence went. She had all the same weaknesses and gave in to them just as willingly, perhaps even more so, as she was often led purely by impulse and gut reactions. I'd watched her grow up, I knew without a doubt that something like this would happen, it was hard to imagine her not doing something so drastic, as trusting as she always was with fate, as ignorant as she was to the evils of the world, so bright her light always shone...  
I knew it would come. But it didn't stop the pain, the betrayal. It didn't leave me with the strength to grasp my poor breaking heart when she left without a word, without a second thought. One moment she's there, the next she's gone, no promise or even one last smile for me to cling to.

_Make me hold you_  
_But then I'm just a ghost_  
_Air-conditioned love_  
_Is always cold_

She was gone, left with a stranger that hardly knew her last name, headed down a path that I knew and maybe even she knew was riddled with sharp, jagged edges and pitfalls that would shatter everything that I loved about her. 'Maybe she did it on purpose', I sometimes think to myself, years after the event, laying with a woman of my own but still thinking of her... She did it on purpose so as to send a message that no one would know but her.  
I know better than this, because she hadn't the ability to think so deeply and far ahead like that. It was not a flaw so much as just a fact about her. She lived in the moment, and for whatever reason she left that day, it was likely true that she, herself, no longer even remembered the reason. I knew and still know better than this but then and now I realize that to have not ignored that logic and held strong to that idea would have sent me down a dangerous and ugly road of violence and aimless revenge. And then when she finally, unexpectedly came back I would have been a bitter and angry man, and I would have lashed out at her and missed my chance, finally, years and years later, when she finally noticed that young boy who'd sat in the background, watching from afar. When she finally realized that I had always been there, not out of convenience, not some knight in shining armor came to sweep her off her feet and give her a fairytale ending, but something sturdy to hold her and soft for her to rest her head on when that energy of hers finally burnt itself out.

  
_I enter her room and it smells like before_  
_Like rain and vanilla, she closes the door_

  
I was mad, when she suddenly showed back up. I had followed her, still watching, but never intervening, through her years away. I knew of her ugly divorce to that man, I knew of her many visits to mental health centers. And for some reason I had still expected the same girl I watched grow up, when she came back.

  
_The movement, the blurring, the echoing ache_  
_Of slow disappearing and smearing away_

She was not the same though, my beautiful, energetic star had collapsed in on herself, burning away until her corpse, nothing but ashes fell back to the earth. She did not rise like a phoenix, but like an ugly brush of thorns with small, angry flowers that would just as soon poison you then calm you with any sort of pleasant fragrance.

  
_But now I'm a thief, I'm a transient freak_  
_A discarded object, I'm hated and weak_

  
I was mad. Mad that she could do this to herself. Mad that she could come crawling back in this state. Mad that she would only recognize me now after all these years, and still seek me out only to suck me dry and be on her way again. But more than anything, I was mad that she could let me see her like this. It was selfish, I am selfish, from time to time. But it was unforgivable. The only thing keeping me sane was the thought that she was not like the rest, though I knew that she was. The ideal that she could not be destroyed, that she could not be broken, despite the fact that I knew it would happen without any doubt at all in my soul.  
That she could kill me once with her silent disappearance, but to kill me again by coming back? It was evil. And yes, I was mad.

  
_She's hollowed my chest and I've haunted her street_

  
But, because I had refused to believe or listen to that part of me that knew she would be this way, I had not taken that terrible road, and I had not become the kind of man that had broken her in the first place. And so when she came back, this stranger that had stolen her face, I let her in, and I held her when she finally lost the last thread of energy she'd held onto. When she finally broke, completely and utterly, right there in front of me. No longer stained glass, no longer a flower, but some twisted, mashed, ugly thing alive only for some string of unlucky luck. Collapsed and died finally right there in my arms.

  
_That ravenous princess, she's ravaged through me_

  
I cried too.

  
She wouldn't ever be the same. She would never be that beautiful, fragile, stubborn thing that I loved again, just as I would never be the quiet onlooker ever again. Neither of us were the same really, the world can't handle people like us, it had to dilute us and ruin us until we're smeared and ugly just like everyone else.  
We would never be the same, but at this point it didn't matter. We didn't have to be the same. We could start over. Be better, or worse, whichever we chose.  
She came back, and I had always remained. Life and time had passed by and ground us down like sandpaper, washed over us with bitter, stinging salt-water, blasted us with torrents of wind and all other manner of weathering things and we were misshapen and broken because of it. But the fact remained that she came back at all. She didn't just come back, she came to me. And this time instead of using me, instead of taking more from me, she gave me all she had left.  
And now we could mold each other, together.

_Make me hold you_  
_But then I'm just a ghost_  
_Air-conditioned love_  
_Is always cold_

**Author's Note:**

> I realize that I haven't yet posted the remainder or even the first half of FYA on this site, I'll get to that, because it will make a little more sense after you've read more of that story. But even by itself I like to think it still makes sense.  
> Originally written with the idea that Kidoumaru is the one telling the story about Tayuya, because for some reason I like that coupleing, but honestly you can imagine it as whoever you want. :) Won't bug me any.  
> The lyrics are from 'Air-Conditioned Love' by Ludo, as stated in the summary. Give it a listen if you haven't heard. Ludo is my favorite.


End file.
